Blogs

As part of the European Development Days (http://eudevdays.eu), a large event organised by the EC in Brussels (26-27 November 2013, Brussels - Tour & Taxis), we organise a lab activity around the role and opportunities of Internet and ICT technology for social change and development.

“ICT 4 Social Change” (http://eudevdays.eu/topics/ict-4-social-change) is a round table organised by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – Barcelona Tech, Fair World Association and Alianza por la Solidaridad Civil Society Organisation, as part of the European Development Days 26-27 November 2013. Let us know by Nov 1 if you'd like a free registration for the event.

The open call in the FIRE CONFINE IP project (http://confine-project.eu), focused on Community Networks, has been extended (firm) until November 14, 2013 and its focus clarified regarding multi-disciplinary research. More details:

We are looking for:
i) technological experiments relevant to community networks that make use of the existing Community-Lab testbed, or multi-disciplinary research working with social groups involved in community networks.
ii) expansion of the Community-Lab testbed over other community networks that bring added value to the testbed.

A total of up to 750,000 € of funding is available for projects with a level of funding per proposal normally be in the order of EUR 50,000 to 100,000€. Participation is open for any organisation from any country in the world (according to the participation rules in FP7 projects). More info about the call: http://confine-project.eu/open-call-2/

Next Thursday, 31st October, at the SustainIT Conference, Bart Lannoo will lead an "EINS Special Session". The SustainIT Conference grew out of the increasing social awareness about the need for containing energy consumption within sustainable rates. It seeks to bring together people from different research areas, and provide a forum to exchange ideas, discuss solutions, and share experiences among researchers, professionals, and application developers both from industry and academia.

The multi-stakeholder (MSH) approach to Internet Governance is hailed by many as the innovative policy process to manage the global Internet ecosystem. Especially keynote speakers at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) were keen to praise the open discussion forum between all stakeholders enabled at the IGF.

Chris Marsden of JRA4 gave a presentation at the Information Commissioners' International Conference in Berlin on 18-19 September on the need for freedom of information on the Internet, focussing on the legal and policy challenges of the 're-entry of geography' into Internet regulation given the GCHQ and NSA interception of trans-Atlantic cables, together with the metaphor of personal data as the silk produced by individuals which is then farmed for wholly different purposes by private and public service providers.

By Robert Madelin, Director General, DG CONNECT: "Science is neither the determinant of, nor a separate community from, policy. Scientific thinking (social as well as natural) is a necessary guardian against self-deception and deserves always and everywhere to sit at the policy table. The natural sciences bring clarity to the magnitude of issues, the options for intervention, and their likely impacts. Cognitive and social science can enhance the knowledge of decision makers: knowledge about how our organisational contexts affect decision making, how our secret but strong cognitive shortc

Chris Marsden will present a paper co-authored with Ian Brown at the IEEE SIIT : http://ieee-siit.org/program/ 8th IEEE Conference on Standardisation and Innovation in Information Technology 24 September 2013 at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Sophia-Antipolis, France. He will also chair the first papers session.